When the crafty auctioneer starts looking at advanced auction domination 101. The biggest decisions you have to make is whether a pattern is worthy of your investment.

Every new raid level, every new patch sets up a difficult conundrum. Is that pattern selling for 10k
worth my hard earned gold. As the patch matures on the servers and more are offered, the same question is asked. Where is the cut off line to take a chance and invest in a craftable pattern.

Here are four rules to set for yourself to decide whether it's time to invest.

1. How many sales do you need till the pattern becomes profitable?

Our first mistress is the all mighty Warcraft gold numbers. The more money we make, the more opportunities we have to buy that shiny trinket we want. Or just to waddle around in our imaginary gold
pool. So the investment numbers take precedent on our investments.

Here is where your wow math prowess and keen eye on materials come into play. Let's take for instance a sample pattern the [Bracers of Flowing Serenity]. The required materials being:*avg price from wowhead.com prices. Profits determined by cost of materials on your server*

A quick shortcut to this is just to use the most expensive material needed for the pattern to get a quick determination on cost of production. Or taking a quick look at the item on Undermine Journal will
show you a quick breakdown of cost on your server per item.

If you purchased the pattern from the AH for 8500 you would need to sell only one of these to gain a very healthy profit. So by sheer numbers this seems to be a good investment.

2. Toon Upgrade

You cannot remove the idea that could an item be worth an investment just to make your raider more powerful. Where crafted items will many times be slightly inferior in numbers as their raid drop counterparts, the ease of crafting an item cannot be removed from the decision. Especially if you're talking about lower level patterns when previous material drops become more available. [Living Embers] were obscenely expensive during the 4.2 raids. Limiting non raiding crafters to invest heavily in materials. With 4.3 these materials took a dramatic drop in cost with the introduction to the looking for raid tool. Patterns also become more attractive to casual raiders because the cost to upgrade instantly alternate raiding toons for the higher level raiding teams as needed.

3. Strength of raiding community

A strong raiding community means strong sales in some areas. But it also means weak sales in some areas. Well progressed raiders will be more liable to have these patterns inside their own guilds. So they are less apt to look to outside guide crafters for items. Included in this is the knowledge that raid drops will be superior to the crafted items. So they are more willing to wait for their wanted item drops instead of investing heavily into higher priced items. Make sure to look at not just your tools to see listing and sales on your server, but get a general feeling on how investment of higher ticket items have developed on your server.

4. End of Cycle Sales

As the end of a patch life continues, items will begin to drop in prices as well as in demand. More and more patterns begin to appear on the Auction House. Some end up being at inexpensive prices. As the supply for these patterns, and even the materials expand, the demand for the crafted items will fall. Your potential sales decrease, till the next expansion is released. Generally when an expansion hits the PTR's, sales of high level crafted items come to a screeching halt. Keeping this in mind to keep from getting stuck with added inventory for materials that will lose value at the end of the patch life.

5. Long Term Sales Investment.

Starting with patch 4.06 certain patterns came on the market almost immediately. Enchanting patterns such as [Enchant Bracers - Might Intellect] at first seemed like large investments. These were not short term investments that would run our of steam like many of the crafted items. They retained their value by being best in slot enchantments even through 4.3. Most enchanters gladly invested a large amount of money on this pattern knowing that there would be continuous sales in the future. Where many crafting patterns will lose their lifespan as more powerful items are found. Some patterns retain their demand for future sales. With materials generally being less expensive, lower prices will be made up by higher sales demand.

With patch 4.3 coming to an end and Mists of Panderia being the active expansion, now is a good time to hone your techniques for the next number of sales.. A little research and a little knowledge of costs can go a long way to put you on track for large amounts of gold.

Want to get in contact with me? . Email me at Dragonbearjoe @ gmail. dOT com or find me on twitter at "@Dragonbearjoe" or leave a comment here. You can find me hanging out on the Shandris Server, chat me up and I will buy you a glass of juice.